Giridharadas: It Was a Flaccid and Sad Parade; Trump Used U.S. Armed Forces as a Birthday Party Rental Company

EXCERPT:

GIRIDHARADAS: “It was a flaccid and sad parade. And after — you know, people have seen now the images of the kind of half-empty bleachers, of the officials kind of yawning and not particularly excited about their own parade that they’d ordered up. Look, Donald Trump tried to use the United States Armed Forces as a birthday party rental company, right? He tried to throw himself a birthday using the United States Armed Forces. And what’s so interesting, there were these memes that started doing the rounds of these pictures from the parade, pictures like what you're seeing, but also the actual marching, juxtaposed with pictures of military parades, of the kind we know Trump likes, the kind of North Korean, Chinese marching in lockstep, thousands of people in these, like, square formations, the kicking going up and down, the arms going up and down. We know that’s what he wanted. And in the United States of America, he was not able to get it despite his power and being the commander-in-chief. And so I started to think about why for this piece, and it strikes me that it’s good to be bad at certain things. And throwing a lockstep military parade is not something we’re going to be good at in this country, because we are free in our bones. This is the country of jazz, not people marching in lockstep. I think this is the country not of North Korean unity, but Korean tacos, where lots of things mix in one, Mexican food, North Carolina food, Korean food. This is not the kind of country that is very good at doing what North Korea is so gifted at, and I'm very grateful for that."